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London

This past week I took a little trip over to London and it was super fun. I got in on Wednesday around noon, and spent the afternoon checking into my (sketchy) hostel and going to the British Museum. The British Museum is really neat - they have parts of the Parthenon, the Rosetta Stone, all of these artifacts from ancient Egypt, and other really cool stuff. It was a fun place to walk around. After that, I headed to dinner and then to Wicked! Wicked was super awesome, it was just so much fun to watch! I treated myself to the big special program book and opera glasses for the show. The lady that played Elphaba was phenomenal... I think I could have listened to her sing forever. On the way home from the show, the signal at one of the tube stops broke down, so they just let us off at a random stop. I was very lucky to ifnd a nice Englishwoman that was going to the same place as me, she helped me navigate the bus system and made sure I got off at the right spot.

Thursday I got up and went to the National Gallery - another really cool museum! This one had all sorts of paintings in it - orignals from Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, El Greco... it was so cool! I wasn't familiar with too many of the paintings, but it was neat because I was familiar with the artists and their trademarks. Once all of the paintings started to blur together, I hopped over to Covent Gardens for lunch and a little shopping. The market was really nice and I bought a few little things, and it was fun just to look around. Then I spent most of the afternoon at LOTR. The show was... interesting. I thought the music was mediocre, and they had to cut out a whole lot of the story (which I expected, but was still a little bit disappointing), but the special effects were absolutely phenomenal. Before the show even started, the hobbits were playing on stage catching fireflies. The stage itself was divided into a whole lot of platforms, so they could do so many different levels and such - so when the hobbits were journeying, it actually looked like they were going somewhere, rather than just around in circles. Also, I'm still trying to figure out how they did the invisible thing when Bilbo and Frodo put on the ring - because it really did not look possible that they used trap doors. There were tons of special effects with the lights and there was some smoke, and the costumes were really cool too. Oh and I was attacked by an orc! Haha, between the second and third acts they didn't have a formal intermission, and the orcs came out into the audience to harrass people. I was really lucky because I saw him coming before he could scare me too badly. After the show they had a Q and A session with two of the cast members, and it was neat to hear some of what went on behind the scenes of the show. For supper I headed to a pub and had the best salmon I've ever eaten in my life. Seriously. It was grilled and was in this cream and butter sauce on a bed of new potatoes, green beans, and spinach... it was very yummy. While I was eating I started talking with a man named Stefan from Switzerland. He was fun to talk to - he was in London to take part in a three week English school, so his English wasn't the best, but it was neat to try to communicate. After dinner I met up with Sarah for drinks, and it was nice to chat and hang out in a pub.

Friday I headed home - long day of travelling! Then I spent the entire weekend relaxing and watching movies and sleeping a lot.

Posted by luvstigger223 on 2008-03-16 19:14:05 | Rating: